1. Technical Field
The present embodiments relate to the field of printing and in particular, to systems and methods for optimizing pixel-processing algorithms.
2. Description of Related Art
High resolution printing systems may often use frame buffer enhancement techniques to improve print quality and, in particular, print resolution. Some enhancement techniques may include, among others, trapping, edge enhancement, and resolution enhacement. Trapping, for example, may be used to correct and/or mask visible effects of print engine misregistration. Trapping may be performed in a pixel-by-pixel manner by expanding or contracting coloring regions slightly in order to eliminate white gaps and/or colored edges between graphical objects. Edge enhancement may be used to modify the boundary of an object to be printed to achieve the impression of a sharper edge. Resolution enhancement may be used to provide resolution improvements by modifying the ink intensity at the boundary region of text characters.
Enhancement techniques can expend considerable computational resources. Some common pixel-based frame buffer enhancement algorithms may analyze all pixels in a frame buffer bitmap for a variety of conditions before modifying the pixels. In some cases, enhancement techniques may involve the analysis of pixels spanning multiple color planes. Typical frame buffer capacities in high resolution printing systems can range from 33 mega-bytes (“MB”) to 512 MB. Accordingly, when frame buffer enhancement techniques are implemented in high resolution printing systems, the computational cost may be enormous because such frame buffers can have in the order of hundreds of millions of pixels.
Thus, there is a need for methods and systems to optimize pixel-based frame buffer enhancement processes for printing systems.